"N—yes—no, sir," Brown stammered, with another glance towards Mrs. LaGrange, who was watching him closely.
"What did you say?" demanded the coroner.
"I said I didn't know what had happened till Uncle Mose told me," Brown answered, doggedly.
"That will do," said the coroner, watching the witness narrowly as he resumed his place among the servants.
During the latter part of Brown's testimony, quick, telegraphic glances had been exchanged between Scott and Mr. Sutherland, and one or two slips of paper, unobserved by any one but Merrick, had passed from one to the other.
Scott was well aware that the statements made by the coachman had deepened suspicion against himself. He paid little attention to the crowd, however, but noted particularly the faces of the guests at Fair Oaks. Ralph Mainwaring's, dark with anger; that of the genial Mr. Thornton coldly averted; young Mainwaring's supercilious stare, and his sister's expression of contemptuous disdain; and as he studied their features his own grew immobile as marble. Suddenly his glance encountered Miss Carleton's face and was held for a moment as though under a spell. There was no weak sentimentality there, no pity or sympathy,—he would have scorned either,—but the perfect confidence shining in her eyes called forth a quick response from his own, though not a muscle stirred about the sternly-set mouth. She saw and understood, and, as her eyes fell, a smile, inexplicable and mysterious, flashed for an instant across her face and was gone.
"John Wilson," announced the coroner, after a slight pause.
A middle-aged man, rather dull in appearance, except for a pair of keenly observant eyes, stepped forward with slow precision.
"You are Mr. Ralph Mainwaring's valet, I believe?" said the coroner.
"That I am, sir," was the reply.